As a young person (21), I feel the same way. Space exploration and a beautiful future suddenly seems achievable with hard work and a lot of engineering instead of just feeling impossible.
That is the goal for me, I'm not going to Mars and I knew that as soon as I went to the MDRS. I also made it an effort to make the director (commander on several mission) to realize how important it is motivate the younger generation and not just the future astronauts that come aborad for analogue missions.
SpaceX doesn't pay much, and you have to make a ton of sacrifices to even be considered, but I can tell you that being there you get this 'I wouldn't be any where else' feeling that I think is far superior to any monetary value.
Unfortunately, many of this year's missions at the MDRS are postponed due to COVID, but the robot challenge (mainly comprised of college aged students) is the one I really felt felt disappointed about. I was going to try and make it out this year to help out with that.
I hope you decide to get involved in this space (pun intended); I know if I was in my 20s, I'd do it all over again.
It is for all of us, it makes the journey that much better. I didn't get into to do any of that above until my mid 30s after starting late at ~26.
Too long to discuss here, but suffice it to say that my priorities are Earth based. I also realized that Mars is in good hands given what I've seen.
Of course that leaves me free to become the oppressive Earth-based space industry tycoon who owns all those comet mining ships and belter stations :)
Interesting, drop me a line when you get either off the ground!
Is it Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station ? Space nerds tend to abuse acronyms almost as much as developers.
Yes. Agreed, I probably should have written that out. Or maybe its just my (weak) developer side speaking...
I was in JPL’s SFOF building watching Armstrong and Aldrin step out onto the moon. Today’s SN8 mission gave me reasonable hope I’ll live to see somebody set foot on Mars.
It’s been a good day.
An amazing future is within your grasp. It might not be what you're picturing, but an education in math, physics, engineering, mechatronics, whatever... will open doors to a brilliant future. Go get em!
And if Elon "solar panels, electric cars and in-house batteries" Musk doesn't contribute enough to save the environment, what exactly are you hoping for instead?
And the short-seller meme of Tesla factory being a death trap is just nonsense. In the first couple of years, Tesla as a company had somewhat more injuries then companies that have literally existed for 100 years but not really by much. How horrible, the company wasn't perfect from day 1.
Additionally Tesla is in the by far most regulated place in the US in terms health reporting and regulation. Why do you think every other car company has left California?
Maybe ask the workers in the city if the would rather the car plant be closed, like every other car plant or not.
You just hate him based on the political philosophy you have clearly adopted, so you need to find reasons to justify your hate to fit it in your framework. You have to re-frame the whole story into some sort of dystopian future space based slave society in order to justify shitting on the progress.
Also, btw, my gf is a full time climate change activist and watched sn8’s start witb as much excitement as myself.
What would be your standard in treating employees terribly well?
And it is strange to mention Musk and Bezos side by side. Their mode of employment is very different.
In Amazon, you are a preprogrammed cog in a spinning retail machine, micromanaged and followed everywhere by algorithms that seek to squeeze maximal output from you and punish you for slight deviations from the script (such as "not having your hand on a railing if you go upstairs"). They even encourage other workers to report you if you do something frowned upon. Human robots - which corresponds well to the nature of Bezos, who is often described as a way-too-rational, aloof man.
This is not what happens around Musk, who is a very different type of personality. In SpaceX, young engineers do overtime voluntarily because they are working on interesting unsolved problems, precisely the thing that you want to take part in at least once in your life. And it is understood that once they leave for a workplace with less driven culture, their stint at SpaceX will be considered very valuble.
Edit: If you are a youngish creative engineering type, you want to have a go at something that is both difficult and world changing. Most people will never have a chance to do so. So if you really become a part of a team that designs Starship etc., no wonder you will spend hours and hours there.
From my personal experience, chasing a difficult bug in my program means that the day flies by and suddenly, the streetlamps are lit. But the victorious feeling is worth it. And my software products are nothing like Starship.
There will be people who want to work long, hard hours on complex problems, and for them, somewhere like SpaceX will be perfect. Just because it doesn't fit the ideals of others doesn't mean that it's bad.
The key is choice. I doubt anyone is forced to work at SpaceX. I'm sure they could leave if they had enough, or not join if they didn't like the deal.
If anything, having it available for people who /do/ want to dedicate themselves to something is a good thing. I think some folks could do to remember that. There are enough easy jobs.
This discrepancy is preventing me from fully cheering for the man, and I guess it causes a certain cognitive dissonance and an irrational defense of everything the man does by his fans.